Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a method of controlling the same, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
Multi-function peripherals (MFPs) are known that have a scanner, a print function, an image saving function, and a communication function to perform copy, print, and scan operations, fax transmission/receiving, and the like. Some of these MFPs further have functions of information processing apparatuses, such as a document file saving function and a user authentication function.
Realization of a user authentication function on an MFP requires management of users of the MFP. Management of the users involves processing of, for example, generating pieces of user information in one-to-one correspondence with the users of the MFP, and deleting user information of a user who no longer uses the MFP. Such deletion of the user information of the user who no longer uses the MFP is performed to avoid a decrease in convenience caused by the unnecessary presence of the user information remaining in the MFP. The decrease in convenience could possibly occur when, for example, a user logs into the MFP by designating his/her icon on a login screen that displays a list of icons corresponding to the pieces of user information. In this case, if many unnecessary pieces of user information remain in the MFP, many icons are displayed, and thus the user may need to go through the trouble of looking for his/her icon.
Furthermore, although it is preferable that user information on an MFP be actually managed by a dedicated administrator, many small-office environments do not have such a dedicated administrator to reduce operational costs. To place priority on convenience rather than security, some of these small-office environments identify a user but do not perform identify confirmation (so-called user authentication) when the user logs into the MFP. Under such environments, each user generates user information by him/herself.
Meanwhile, user information may be deleted by a user him/herself, or may be automatically deleted by an MFP. For example, according to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-134797, user information of a user who has not logged in for a certain period is deleted.
A problem with the technique described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-134797 is that a user who has not logged into an MFP for a certain period can no longer log into the MFP, and no longer use the functions of the MFP that are provided on the premise of a login. For example, assume a case in which a user transmits a print job from a PC and stores the print job to the MFP, with an intention to print the print job afterwards. In this case, if the user does not log into the MFP for the certain period, the user can no longer log into the MFP, and the print job saved in the MFP cannot be executed when the user wants to execute the print job.